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Delta Flight Lands On Atlanta Taxiway, Narrowly Avoids Disaster

You know what? Landing your airplane on an airport taxiway is not a good idea, even if you have a "medical emergency" onboard. This is exactly what happened at the consistently busy Atlanta Hartsfield-Jackson Airport on Monday, when a Delta flight inbound from Rio de Janeiro phoned in their emergency and then landed on the wrong stretch of tarmac.

Luckily for this plane and all the passengers on it, there were no other airplanes waiting on the taxiway to cause a collision, although there easily could have been what with Atlanta's congestion. The Delta flight should have landed on the runway, which is larger and longer and labelled as a runway, that sits parallel to the taxiway. Both the pilot and co-pilot have been relieved from flying while the investigation is pending; it's still not known what the medical emergency was. The FAA is concerned, and a spokewoman noted that "it was 'very, very rare' for a plane to land on a taxiway rather than the runway. 'None of us here, anecdotally, can remember this happening.'" Hopefully it won't happen again either.

Related Stories:
· Delta Flight Lands On Taxiway Instead Of Runway [AJC]
· Delta coverage [Jaunted]

[Photo: Jaunted]